


100 Shots Not Taken

by thegoodthebadandthenerdy



Category: American Vandal (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Pining, but i took hella liberties w the timeline bc im bad at remembering details, my biggest qualm w this fic is tht i dont get to use gabi, set around 1x04, yknow wht i just want peter and dylan to have their weird friendship is tht too much to ask?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 23:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16252367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodthebadandthenerdy/pseuds/thegoodthebadandthenerdy
Summary: Peter starts to laugh, but stops about halfway through it when the rest of the words sink in.Horrifically, the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, "Gretzky."Fuck Dylan Maxwell.





	100 Shots Not Taken

**Author's Note:**

> yknow wht im not even gonna make excuses for this. i wrote a nearly 4k av fic and ive got plans for more! metaphorically sue me!

Peter tries to be organized. Because a documentarian, a tried and true one, is organized. Professional and- 

Knows where his fucking equipment is.

He pushes his glasses up and drags his hands tiredly, fustratedly, over his face. 

Because Peter _tries_ to be organized. But he isn't. When it comes to evidence, sure, but camera equipment and mic packs and everything else?

That's Sam.

Sam with his color coded notecards and excess rolls of string.

Sam who is currently not speaking to Peter.

Fuck.

He combs back through the bag one last time, still unable to find the cord he needs, so he finally allows himself to admit it's not there.

Normally he'd just text Sam, who would laugh at him, sure, but mostly for how stressed he got over one easily findable thing, and then he'd direct him right to it. There'd be mirth in his words and it wouldn't sting-

That's the thing Peter doesn't want to admit, right? It had stung, Sam's reaction to the theory. Sure, he didn't think he'd be ecstatic, but it's not like, not like he was _trying_ to put him on blast. He was just trying to be unbiased, just trying to be credible, and it seemed so logical.

Logical or not, though, it was also a dick move, no pun intended.

So he doesn't really have a right to complain about the missed calls and the read, but only read, texts. No matter how tight it made his stomach clench with each read receipt that popped up.

And he especially didn't have a right when he didn't even know why it was getting to him. They fought all the time, not like, not like all they did was fight, but in the grand scheme of their friendship, they'd fought a lot. 

And as with everything he doesn't understand - or, say, doesn't want to admit to himself - and can't investigate, he pushes it down and focuses on the things he can control. 

The cord, for instance. There's a good chance it had been left at Dylan's, as that was the last place they had filmed, so logically, it was smart to check there first. 

He tugs his phone out of his pocket, hands already searching for Dylan's contact. 

_Hey, I think some equipment got left at your place, can I come look?_

**hell yeah man come on**

Which is how he ends up on Dylan's front stoop - for the first time, by himself and without camera. 

"Hey, Pete, what's up, man?" 

"Hey," he greets in return as Dylan slaps a hand on his back and ushers him in.

"Where's your boy?" he asks, hand on the door, keeping it open.

_Your boy._

"Oh, uh, actually," he stammers out. "I mean-"

Dylan nods. "Nah, I get it. Shit's tough sometimes. C'mon in, though, the boys are in the living room."

Peter nods, to himself mostly, and lets himself be herded toward the living room where he can tell the Wayback Boys are smoking before he even hits the threshold.

"Yo, Peter!" Lucas calls out happily, shooting him a grin, which causes Spencer's head to bounce up, swaying his hair, to greet him in kind. Ganj gives him a nod of recognition, and then Peter's being instructed to sit down, and so he's sitting on the floor with his head spinning too fast to even take count of anything anymore.

"Pete, man, you look like shit," Lucas informs him sagely, which earns him a half-hearted kick from Ganj. 

Peter digs his hands deeper into the pocket of his sweatshirt, but doesn't reply, doesn't know how to reply.

"Dude, shut up," Dylan hisses. 

"What! He looks like he needs to get high - Peter, do you need to get high?" Lucas questions in an oddly toned voice. Something like…Dr. Phil? It's then that he sees that that's what's on TV, and gets the joke.

"He's got that lung shit, remember?" Spencer surprisingly interjects. 

"Yeah," Dylan agrees. "You're gonna like, make 'em shrivel up or whatever, leave him alone."

"That's actually not-" Peter tries to interject, but he's already being spoken over as they seemingly return to their conversation from before he'd arrived.

So he sits amidst whatever conversation is happening, letting it all flow in one ear and out the other without consideration like white noise. It almost works, the pitches of their voices layering until he's staring into a patch of floor, thumb idly rubbing the edge of his sleeve, mind blank.

Well, not blank. Moreso that forced kind of blank where everything you don't want to say is behind a door and it won't quit knocking.

But it's a knock you can ignore, so you do. Unless you sit in it, unable to actively engage in whatever's happening around you for whatever reason. 

And since he's not being involved in the flow of conversation, unfolding in Peter's mind is a neatly plotted timeline of how he probably fell in love with his best friend.

Well, not probably, but he definitely did, it's just easier to say probably-

But everything's going fine! Peter learned to repress his inner turmoil years ago. You may let it stew at the back of your mind, making you feel increasingly like shit, but by god no one will ever realize how utterly horrible you're feeling, and that's what matters most.

Okay, obviously not what matters most in a healthy scenario, but Peter's already gone like two nights without sleep this week because of Vandal, so it's not like he's really one for healthy scenarios anyway.

So yeah, everything's going fine.

Until he realizes he's being called upon, and much like some of his worst nightmares, doesn't know the answer.

He stares blankly back at the four around him, unsure of how to proceed. He may have forgotten that he was internally breaking down in front of like, four of the worst people to break down in front of.

Finally, the silence is broken.

It's Dylan with, "Pete, what'd you say you left over here?" 

And then Peter, simple and tactless and still trying to do damage control, "I didn't."

Which at least gets a laugh out of the surrounding WB. 

"Yeah, sure, but you look miserable, dude. We can find it and you can go home."

Which is…oddly kind? And surprisingly perceptive? Or maybe Peter's just shit at schooling his face. That's a very real possibility.

"Oh, no, I'm not, I mean-"

But he is. Miserable, that is. But it has nothing to do with present company and moreso with company that isn't present and should be and the fraying ends of his nerves as he realizes why it's so important to him that said unpresent company is, y'know, present.

But Dylan has this kinda look on his face that Peter can't pinpoint and if he were a fucking idiot would possibly say is something akin to concern, but he isn't - or at least, likes to think he isn't - so he doesn't.

"Yeah, all right, can I check your room?"

Dylan nods, and Peter is pushing himself off the floor and already heading that way before he realizes the tread of shoes behind him.

He doesn't comment, thinks better of it, actually, because for once it dawns on him that maybe everything isn't about him, and Dylan is just following along because it's his room and he doesn't want Peter in there by himself.

Peter starts scouring the room before he's even fully over the threshold. He hears Dylan flop onto the bed, and then surprisingly, nothing after that.

Or, well, nothing until, "So it must be pretty bad?"

It's phrased as a question, he can hear the uptick at the end, but he gets the feeling there's previous questions he's missing. Like he's staring down the opening credits to the sequel for a movie he's never seen.

"Uh, what?"

He turns slightly to face Dylan, who has an almost thoughtful look on his face.

"Whatever happened. It's like, pretty bad, right?"

Peter blinks once, twice, finally, "What the hell are you talking about?"

Dylan makes a weird groan as he raises his hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay, I get it, you don't wanna talk about dating stuff-"

Peter's features all pinch together slightly - he's tired, he's rolling in self-loathing, and now, of all things, Dylan Maxwell is trying to get in his non-existent romantic life. 

Jesus. Christ.

"Dylan, I'm really tired, so if this is some new video for the channel where you prank nerds about their non-existent partners-"

"Oh shit, you and Sam broke up?" 

Three things about that statement:

1\. Not what he was expecting to come out of Dylan's mouth.

2\. It was said with a surprising amount of care.

3\. The care, for all intents and purposes, seemed genuine.

" _What_?"

Peter hates the slight crack in his voice.

"Yo, man, that sucks, you two were all perfect and shit-"

"Sam and I aren't- we've never- Dylan you do know that Sam and currently are not, nor have we ever been, a couple.

For good measure, he adds, "Right?"

Dylan leans back on his elbows, a surprised look on his face. "Dude, c'mon, quit fucking with me. Never? Like not even an awkward spin the bottle kiss in seventh grade?"

There had, in fact, been an awkward spin the bottle kiss, but it was eighth grade, thank you very much- not the point, though!

"No! Have you seriously thought this whole time that your documentation and his camera guy/best friend were hooking up?"

"I mean, I thought you two were like in love and shit, but yeah, I figured you two hooked up. But like- I didn't think about it. Not like, literally-"

"Oh my god."

And okay, the laughter that pools in his stomach and trickles out of his mouth is his god given right considering Dylan Maxwell, of all fucking people, clocked Peter's sexual tension with his best friend before literally anyone else.

When Peter sinks to the floor, still laughing, Dylan finally starts to worry, his own nervous laughter dying off in favor of asking if he's 'good.'

He manages to rein his laughter back in, push it in, rather, when he presses his hands against his face, not for the first time.

"I'm not talking about this with you," he says, voice muffled.

"Ah, c'mon, you gotta tell me." Peter can _hear_ the shit-eating grin in his voice.

"I don't have to tell you shit, Dylan."

"Yeah, but you kinda want to."

If only Dylan had been this aware on March 15th and had taken a time-stamped Instagram video or some shit - he wouldn't be on the hook for possibly spray painting 27 dicks, and he damn sure wouldn't be sitting in his room with his gay documentarian who was having a mid-day crisis.

God, when did Peter's life get so fucked.

"I," Peter began slowly, treading carefully with his words, "Really can't talk about this with you."

"Fair, fair; so, like, you're totally in love with him, though, right?"

"Dylan, Jesus, why are you so invested in this?"

"Hey, you said you couldn't talk about it with me, not that I couldn't talk about it with you."

"That's literally the same _thing_!"

"Nah."

They continue in the open silence, Dylan bouncing his foot lightly as he waits for Peter's response. Once he realizes that he was just going to sit there with his face in his hands, he rolls his eyes and says, "You just gotta go for that shit, man. What's that thing about the hundred shots you don't take?"

"I'm getting Gretzky'd. I'm actually getting fucking Gretzky'd," Peter mumbles to himself. "And not even correctly!"

"Oh, yeah! It's that Wayne Gretzky quote - anyway, you know what I'm talking about, you're smart and shit."

"Let me get this straight-" Peter starts, ignoring Dylan's interruption of, "If you can?" to continue, "You, a) thought Sam and I were dating, b) now understand we're not, but c) think I should go for it because d)…?"

"You guys are super gay for each other and if you're like, depressed over him or whatever, you're kind of a bummer to be around. More than usual. Not like a bad bummer, but a little bit of a killjoy. But now you're a bad bummer and maybe also a killjoy? Pete, man, c'mon, I just told you how smart you are, figure this out."

Peter has been trying go figure it out for months.

"I'm gonna go home."

"What about your- whatever you left here?"

"Just text me if you find it," he replies, already heading for the door.

Dylan doesn't make to follow him, so he waves slightly to the Wayback Boys, hears them chorus goodbyes, and before he can close the front door to the Maxwell's house, he hears, "Remember Gretzky!"

Unfortunately, he does.

It's two days later when he finally hears from Sam. In true Ecklund fashion, it's not a text or call, but rather him showing up on Peter's front doorstep, fiddling with his phone in one hand, and holding the missing cord in the other.

Peter stamps down the vicious need to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"So, can I come in?" Sam asks, shoving his phone into his pocket and looking expectantly at Peter. "Dylan texted that he found this," he raises the cord, "So I'm gonna assume you haven't been able to do shit with either of the cameras and it's driving you insane."

Peter stumbles over at least three different responses, but is quickly moving out of the way and saying, "Yeah, yeah, of course," to a neutral-expressioned Sam and he can't worry too much about it.

"Dude, you know you could've just asked and I could've got you the back-up, right?"

Peter freezes mid-stride, foot hovering over one of the carpeted steps that leads upstairs, and he isn't sure what to say. Instead, he shakes his head slightly and keeps moving up, trying to find the right words.

"I, uh, you didn't really seem to want to hear from me."

"Yeah, but it's Vandal stuff, and I, y'know, the doc is super important."

The unspoken _to you_ is there, and Peter tries not to think about the fact that it isn't, apparently, important to _Sam_

He doesn't really have a reply.

They make it to the attic in their usual time, and thus, before Peter knows it, he's, for the first time ever, standing in awkward silence with his lifelong best friend.

He has his hands shoved in the pockets of his sweatpants, and Sam looks like he wants to be literally anywhere else, picking at the sleeve of the long-sleeved t-shirt that sits under his short-sleeved one.

The silence is actually pretty painful.

"Look, man, I-" Sam starts as Peter blurts out, "I'm sorry about the Gabi theory. It was shitty- of me. It was really shitty of me."

Sam looks back in - almost shock? His eyebrows have lifted and his mouth is still half-open, mid word.

"Yeah, it was," he says boldly. "Supremely shitty, if you will."

Peter cracks half a smile, only one corner of his lips picking up. 

"And I mean, look, I probably overreacted a little, but to be fair, I am a drama kid, and like, I did have to sit through my best friend dicing through my relationship with my other best friend, despite how many times I've told the former I'm really not into the latter."

Peter's at about three quarters of a smile now, which he didn't think was even a thing that was possible. But Sam has a lighter tone to his voice, md for the first time in the past three days, Peter thinks they'll be all right.

He opens his mouth to reply, only for him to be cut off before he can say anything with Sam saying, "And if you say it was logical I'm gonna make you get that stupidly large dictionary you have because you're a huge fucking dork, and I'm gonna make you look up like four different words for gay in it."

Peter starts to laugh, but stops about halfway through it when the rest of the words sink in.

Horrifically, the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, "Gretzky."

Fuck Dylan Maxwell.

"What?" Sam asks, seemingly dumbfounded, and Peter really can't blame him.

"Oh, my god," Peter says, already moving to bury his face in his hands. "Oh, my god, I can't believe I just said that."

"God, I thought Gab had the best response, 'cause I did like, the traditional, 'I'm gay', y'know? And she just goes, like without a second thought, no hesitstion, 'I thought you were American' which is really, the most a guy could ask fo-mmph."

Peter had, admittedly, gone on auto-pilot the second Sam started speaking again. Which is how he managed to pull his hands from his face, set his shoulders, diminish the few feet between them, take Sam's face in his hands, and in front of god and possibly his neighbors given that the blinds were open, lay one on a nervous-rambling Sam Ecklund.

In the spirit of admitting things, Peter hasn't really done a lot of kissing. There were like, two girls pre-high school, who he refused to count, the awkward spin the bottle kiss in eighth grade, and- oh god, that was it.

But save for the slight sound he made when Peter connected their mouths - which, he'd at least managed to correctly line up - Sam kisses like he knows what he's doing.

Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, Peter vaguely wonders exactly what goes down at Camp Miniwaka.

And like, okay, so it isn't perfect, because Peter thinks his glasses might be digging slightly into Sam's face, and their teeth keep bumping, but the feeling of their mouths pressed together is far, far, far from being the worst thing in the world, and Peter's choosing to focus on that.

By the time they pull back - which is much longer than anyone who has a surprise kiss they _don't_ want sprung on them, so Peter thinks he at least has that going for him - he realizes that at some point his hands had curled into the shirt fabric near Sam's hips, and Sam's own hands had come up to hold Peter's face, and they're standing incredibly close-

"Holy shit," Sam mumbles, and Peter can feel his breath against his lips. 

Against his better judgement, Peter snorts. Because there's this look of genuineness in Sam's eyes as he says it, and his thumbs press a little harder into the sides of Peter's face as his mouth moves, but his eyes never waver, and it's- nice.

"Yeah," he hums. "Sorry for uh, springing that-"

"No, dude, shut up before you ruin this by saying something somehow more stupid than 'Gretzky', which like- should I be worried about that? You trying to tell me something, Pete? Because even I gotta say American Apparel and Wayne Gretzky is like, kinda weird-"

Peter wrinkles his nose out of sheer reflex. "Oh, my god stop talking! Stop talking."

"Yeah, I don't think I can get down with a hockey fetish, dude-"

Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, Peter tugs Sam somehow closer and brings their mouths back together to shut him up.

\-----

Later, when they're sat side by side, leaning against one another as they scroll through videos from Nana's party, Sam asks, "So, the Gretzky thing?"

Peter pauses the video playing in front of them - a shot of that kid with his head stuck between the railings blazing back from the overly brightened screen in the steadily darkening room - and swings his head around sheepishly.

"Bad Dylan advice."

It takes a moment for the words to register on Sam's face, in fact, Peter can actually watch the process unfold.

"You- you talked to _Dylan Maxwell_ about your gay pining for your best friend!" he exclaims incredulously. "What the fuck, at least I told _Gabi_ , y'know, someone reasonable."

"Hold on, technically I didn't tell him anything-"

"Then how would he-"

"Apparently he actually thought we've been dating this whole time?"

It takes approximately three seconds for Sam's face to collapse in pure glee.

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me," he says through a laugh that's bordering on a wheeze. "For real?"

"Yeah," and Peter doesn't know why the tone in his voice is sheepish, they've kinda surpassed embarrassment for the day. "He uh, was trying to get me to go for it - you - and he misquoted Gretzky."

"Hold on: you took dating advice from Dylan Maxwell. We kissed, after a lotta weird years, because you took…you took dating advice from Dylan Maxwell, Pete, holy shit, hold me up," Sam cries out as he collapses even further, gasping out fervent laughter.

"Okay, but you weren't complaining when I kissed you," he rebuts, fiddling with a stray string on his pants, his face screwing up as a swath of nerves goes through him.

 

This finally seems to get Sam to reel himself back in, reaching out with a surprising gentleness to grab Peter's hand to keep it still.

"Hey, man, I'm not laughing at you, it's just. It's funny, yeah? Like if I knew all I had to do to get you to kiss me was act like a middle school guidance counselor, I would've put like four 'hang in there, kitty' posters up in my room and one in my locker. Maybe two in my locker."

This does at least pull soft laughter from Peter. "You're incredibly desperate, huh?"

"Hell yeah, man. No shame in my game."

Peter smiles slightly, turning back toward the laptop as he leans a little more against Sam, who leans a little more against him. His eyes are slightly unfocused as they gaze at the screen, until they seem to snap like a rubberband into focus. 

"Do you see that?" he asks. "In the left corner, is that-"

But Sam's already leaning in, trying to discern anything from the grainy footage.

After a moment, Peter hears a soft, "Pete, holy shit, it's the spray paint."

Sam turns back to face him with a dopey grin on his face. "This is like- this is an actual lead. The spraypaint came from Nana's house, we can-! Dude, we can actually narrow down our search pool!"

A mirror grin spreads across Peter's face.

It makes their next kiss a little harder, but they figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> im on tumblr @wlwshehulk !


End file.
